Cobra Kai Season 3: With any reboot series, it is often the Easter Eggs that are the most lovable to longtime Karate Kid fans. The creators of Cobra Kai were on point with this, so Daniel’s return to Okinawa is full of tributes to The Karate Kid Part II.
Even this sequel had an easter egg early before easter eggs were even a thing. When Daniel and Kumiko go dancing at a retro 50s club, the song that plays is “Rock Around the Clock”. It was the theme song to Happy Days – the 1970s TV show where Pat Morita had a recurring role as soda shop owner Arnold Takahashi. Here are some ways Cobra Kai season 3 pays homage to The Karate Kid Part II.
The following Cobra Kai Season 3:
First of all, a reminder of what happened in The Karate Kid II. The sequel was the most financially successful film in the Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) Tetralogy. It brought together nearly the whole cast from the first film, but only for the sequel cameos. The story instantly picks up where the first movie left off, right after Daniel’s first victory in the All-Valley karate tournament. Kreese (Martin Kove) was so mad at the loss of Johnny (William Zabka) that he starts choking him. Chokeholds are a repeated choreographic motif in later fights between Kreese and Johnny in Cobra Kai. Miyagi saved Johnny from Kreese, but rather than ending it, he blew his horn.
After that, Daniel and Miyagi left the rest of the cast behind and went to Okinawa. Ali (Elisabeth Shue) didn’t return for the sequel. She was replaced by Kumiko, a new love for Daniel. And Johnny stayed in California, so he was replaced by a new rival, Chozen. Apart from the opening scene, the cast and location of the sequel are fully replaced except for Miyagi and Daniel. It was a bold move, but it worked.
The Final Fight in Cobra Kai Season 3
The final fight between Daniel and Chozen was flawed on several levels. As Kumiko performed a conventional fan dance on a moated platform in the central courtyard of an historical castle, Chozen rushed forward and challenged Daniel to a fight to the death. However, Daniel rocks on the bridge, the ditch only appears to be a couple of foot deep. There was a large audience watching Kumiko’s dance recital but when Daniel and Chozen begin the death game, nobody is trying to break them up.
Instead of intervening, Miyagi and a reformed Sensei Sato (Danny Kamekona) lead the audience to spin the rotating hand drums (known as den-den daiko) to motivate Daniel to use the new secret hand technique . that Miyagi taught him. But if it is a secret of Miyagi-do, did not Chozen know it too? He had the same grandmaster as Daniel, Miyagi’s (Charlie Tanemoto) father.
And if it was so secret that Chozen did not know it, why would the public understand that the den-den daiko had something to do with karate? The final fight is a foolish try to squeeze some poetry into the climax of the film, but it does not make much sense when you step back and look at it logically. In a conclusion that can be lowered with pain and a significant knockout blow as to why the public understood that den-den daiko had anything to do with karate?
What else do we know?
The final fight is a foolish try to squeeze some poetry into the climax of the film, but it does not make much sense when you step back and look at it logically. In a conclusion that can be lowered with pain and a significant knockout blow to the, why did the public understand that the den-den daiko had anything to do with karate? The final fight is a foolish try to squeeze some poetry into the climax of the film, but it does not make much sense when you step back and look at it logically. In a painfully predictable conclusion and a significant knockout blow to the cobra Kai Easter Egg, their fight ends just like the one between Kreese and Miyagi at the start of the film. Instead of finishing Chozen, Daniel picks his nose.
Because The Karate Kid Part II took place in Okinawa, it was an outlier and hard to integrate into Cobra Kai. The den-den daiko was shown several times, but that was as far as they could go. The only logical way for Cobra Kai to bring The Karate Kid Part II was to bring Daniel back to Okinawa.
